I'm considering trying on bard for awhile. I have it leveled to 13, but in those levels, I rarely used any of my songs. My skills are something like 9 in singing, 6 in string, and 6 in wind. I spent about an hour spamming songs on myself in Bastok last night to raise my skills that high, but my cap is something around the high 30s.

Is there an easier way to raise these skills? I don't want to enter a party and handicap others because of this. At higher levels, I hear people saying you can cast spells on the fish in Sea for good skillups. Does that mean casting on mobs yields higher skillups than casting buffs on yourself?

Aye, but as it is now, I feel like my skills are so undercapped that I need to raise them before I even start partying. I might feel better being at the level 10 cap while having bard at level 13, but right now, my wind instrument just dinged 7....so that's like...level 2 :x

it only matters for landing requiem and such. It won't affect the buffs much. I say just party. I used to sleep mobs then just constantly sing at em with horn, then with string -- seemed fastest for leveling them up

Just keep jamming on your instruments. For the offensive stuff, what I did was cast foe I, then II, then III, so that that the highest one that actually lands, will stick. Doesn't work well when you're going backwards iirc due to it having no effect because a higher one already landed. You can do this for buffs too if you have that much more time to do stuff. This is also assuming that you're not busy trying to help cure or something.